"It wouldn't have come into everybody's head, though," Mr. Russell said. He had been as dismal as could be, up to that moment, in a sort of limp way, the corners of his mouth dropping, with a look as if nothing in the world could comfort him. But the dismalness began to go off with his first cup of tea. He sat upright, and I felt him looking at me, in the way strangers often did look: for those were my pretty days, and it's no use denying that I was an uncommonly pretty girl. Everybody said so, and I suppose everybody must have known. I was used to being admired, but still it made me blush. Father was pale still, and I was glad to see him taking something. Then I went to ask mother if I should stay in her place a few minutes, though I was quaking inwardly at the idea, for I knew that the dreadful bleeding might come on again any moment. It was a braver thing of me, really, to offer to do this, than it had been to wave the red shawl, though of course nobody guessed it. But mother said she had promised the doctor not to leave Miss Russell until he came again: so I carried in some tea to her. Mr. Russell would persist in helping me. I had to let him bring the tray across the passage to the door of the room, where his sister was. I thought that uncommon pretty, and nice of him too. It seemed fine to be waited on by Mr. Russell, in the sort of way that I knew gentlemen waited on ladies in grand houses. I had seen it for myself at the big house, when I went there to help for a week, one of the housemaids being taken suddenly ill. The servants all made a pet of me, and the ladies too, and I was sent in and out of the drawing-room with messages. I had seen the gentlemen picking up what the ladies dropped, and fetching what they wanted, and carrying what they had to take anywhere, and so on. Mother said it was always like that with real gentlemen. But I didn't see, and I never do see, why things shouldn't be something like that too, in the homes of working-men. Because a man is a working-man, and wears rough clothes, that's no reason why he must be gruff and short. The Bible command, "Be courteous," is meant for everybody alike—not for gentlefolk only. To be sure I've known many a working-man who wasn't exactly gruff or short, and who was always kind; and yet it would never come into their heads to do that sort of little polite thing, just because they were not trained to it, you know. I suppose they would have laughed at the idea outright; though I don't know why they should, except that Englishmen always laugh at what they are not used to. I'm quite sure of one thing, and that is that the more gentle-mannered and attentive a man is to his women-folk, the more they'll slave their lives out for him. Scolding and gruff words don't bring but only a sullen sort of service; and there's too many a husband and father who seldom troubles himself to speak in his home at all, except in a grumble.